Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles is a 1972 BBC Films production following architectural historian Reyner Banham as he tours the “four ecologies” of Los Angeles: Surfurbia (beach), Foothills (basin), The Plains of Id (foothills), and Autopia (freeways) by automobile.

There’s a running meme on Curbed Los Angeles that keeps track of how The New York Times continually gets Los Angeles hilariously wrong – so much so, that Curbed actually made a bingo game out of it.

This reminds me of a charming (the smog…the freeways…the film stock!) BBC documentary from the early 1970s in which Reyner Banham, professor of architecture at University College London, visits our fair city and produces this travelogue of sorts – including a lunch with artist, Ed Ruscha. A companion piece to his seminal text Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, this video is as essential as the text itself in voicing what makes Los Angeles so special. Perhaps the editors of The New York Times should find 52 minutes to spare.

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Reblogged this on Typefiend™ and commented:
If you’re an Angeleno and haven’t yet seen this BBC documentary following Reyner Banham, professor of architecture at University College London, as he tours 1970’s Los Angeles, you need to immediately or don’t pass GO.

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